ESPN.com · Dec 8, 2020
A support team, Taco Bell and trust: How Washington's Ron Rivera faced cancer without missing a game
ASHBURN, Va. -- Before he received his dosage of radiation and underwent chemotherapy, Washington Football Team coach Ron Rivera received a simple but meaningful greeting at the front desk of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Fairfax, Virginia.
It was an everyday gesture in a situation that wasn't ordinary.
Linda Carter, who has been at the front desk in the institute's radiology department for 18 years, serves as a de facto aunt for the cancer patients waiting in her lobby. She was part of the community that developed around Rivera as he underwent cancer treatment. Multiple doctors, therapists and nurses were tasked with helping cure the squamous cell cancer in his throat.